I was inspired to make this the Word of the Week by a dear friend of mine who came home from a Sun Valley ski trip to with a case of Idaho wine. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’ve never had a wine from the state better known for potatoes. I asked him what sort of wine it was, and he said, “I got mixed case of chardonnay, merlot, syrah, cabernet, and cuvée.”

Because he invited me over for my virgin Idaho wine experience, I forgave my friend his minor lapse in parallel structure. He had implied that that cuvée was a varietal, like chardonnay, merlot, syrah, and cabernet, but it’s not.

What is it then, and how did that Idaho wine taste? Click here to find out:

“Cuvée” is used in French winemaking to refer to a batch or a blend. Often it marks out a batch or blend that’s somehow special, as in it came from the best parcels of the vineyard, the best grapes, or the oldest vines. For example, Moet makes a bunch of different champagnes, and Dom Perignon is its “Tête de Cuvée,” or top of the line. Sometimes “cuvée” just means that it’s a different batch, not necessarily the best, and sometimes winemakers use it informally to mean “the finished wine,” as in, after a lot of blending and tasting, this is the recipe that I’m going to bottle.

But how was the Idahoan cuvée, which happened to be made by one Frenchman’s Gulch Winery in Ketchum out of cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, merlot, and petit verdot grapes? Very respectable — perhaps because the grapes actually come from neighboring Washington state. (The vine pictured above, though, is growing on the Idaho side of the border, just for proof that viticulture does happen there.) But my friend and I loved the wine’s seriousness, balance, and its little bit of spiciness. It was a 2003, and should be priced around $35.

Today’s wine word comes to you by way of Matt (pictured here with me), the national sales manager at Larkmead Vineyards, who, during a recent visit to the tasting room, described one of Larkmead’s reds as having “riparian” earth notes. The adjective describes the green belt next to a river or stream, so we’re guessing that Matt was describing a wet earth, even mossy note in the wine, a 2003 cabernet-based blend called “Salon.” It may sound weird, but so-called secondary characteristics like this, in measure, are very prized among some tasters and some winemakers, especially if they’re going for Bordeaux dead ringers.

I spotted this word in the November 15 issue of “Wine Spectator”: it describes the crime of letting a wine age too long before you drink it. It’s vinocide when, for example, you buy a lively sauvignon blanc from New Zealand’s latest vintage — and then forget about it in your closet for two years, where it fades and expires. When opened, it’s lost its tangy, zingy flavors of lime and grapefruit. The mandated minimum sentence for vinocide is an evening of disappointment and (if you brought this over-the-hill Burgundy as a housewarming gift) embarrassment. Bring a backup.